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Handling Motor Vehicle Cases

With injury and death rates on the roads increasing due to distracted driving, and the onset of crashes caused by self-driving vehicles, the number of injuries from motor vehicle crashes is skyrocketing. According to the USDOT and NHTSA, traffic fatalities increased 5.6% in one year. According to the USDOT, between 2014 and 2015 as distracted driving became a more serious problem in America, there was an annual increase in traffic deaths of 7.2% - the largest annual percentage increase in 50 years.  In recent years, pedestrian deaths due to vehicles have increased 9.0% in one year to the highest rate since 1990, SUV occupant fatalities have increased 10.1%, van occupant fatalities have increased 9.3%, and bicycle fatalities have increased 12.2% in one year. According to USDOT and NHTSA, nationwide, 37,461 deaths, and approximately 2,400,000 injuries were sustained as a result of motor vehicle collisions. According to NHTSA, traffic crashes are the leading cause of death from age 3 to age 34 nearly every year. So, comes as little surprise then that motor vehicle cases are the #1 area of practice for most personal injury lawyers.

There can be great complexity to these cases, including differences with head on collisions, side impact collisions and rear end collisions. Cases can be resolved through settlement, mediation, non-binding arbitration, binding arbitration or litigation depending upon the rules of your state, whether the case is a third-party case, or a first-party case, and other laws governing mandatory arbitration in cases worth a certain amount. Statutory attorney fees can be available in some states. In others, you may face issues pertaining to Personal Injury Protection or MedPay coverage. Settlements may warrant structured settlements, while others may require Medicare Set Aside accounts, restricted accounts for minors and incapacitated people, or special needs trusts. Defense medical examinations both on PIP/Medpay and litigation are a constant problem and the defense of malingering by insurance doctors is commonplace. This level of complexity doesn’t even consider the myriad of medical conditions that can arise from the significant forces generated by two or more vehicles traveling at a high rate of speed with considerable mass. Nor does it consider how to deal with insurers who will hire an accident reconstructionist or biomechanist to say that the force on your client’s car was less than 2.5Gs and therefore your client couldn’t possibly be injured. It had to be pre-existing degenerative arthritis, or abuse 40 years before the crash. These cases carry every insurance company tactic and defense excuse possible to escape responsibility. With increasing regularity, we are we are seeing certain insurers offer little or nothing even on serious injury claims, and forcing lawyers to go to trial to recover anything for their client.

Trial Guides’ first product was a book on the Colossus software system used by insurers to systematically underpay bodily injury claims. Since that release in 2004, most of the products released by Trial Guides provide methods to settle or litigate motor vehicle cases, as well as bad faith claims against auto insurers. This has created an unprecedented library of books and video resources aimed at helping personal injury attorneys to improve outcomes for injured people.


Top 10 Resources for Lawyers Handling Motor Vehicle Cases

The list below focuses on specific skills, knowledge and methods that will help you maximize outcomes in your motor vehicle cases. To see all products sold by Trial Guides that relate to handling motor vehicle cases, please click the button at the bottom of the page.

Recommended Resources

Mastering Motor Vehicle Cases - Trial Guides

Mastering Motor Vehicle Cases

This DVD set contains highlights from the first advanced Trial Guides CLE seminar dedicated to motor vehicle cases. It features epidemiologist/crash reconstructionist Dr. Arthur Croft, researcher Dr. Paul Ivancic, and trial lawyer Dr. Aaron DeShaw. In addition to handling a wide variety of issues related to injury causation, accident reconstruction, and typical defenses related to all types of auto cases, the set also addresses challenges specific to minor impact cases. It provides an advanced and in-depth consideration of motor vehicle cases that will take you from the fundamentals of insurance claims settlement and through more advanced topics. This set will give you the information necessary to get your clients fair compensation for their losses and overcome the defe...

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The Elements of Trial - Trial Guides

The Elements of Trial

  One of America's leading litigators, and Trial Guides' bestselling author, Rick Friedman brings you the first practical text on the fundamental skills you need to know when handling a trial. With trial experience increasingly rare, The Elements of Trial provides a concise guide for law professors, law students, and every lawyer preparing for trial. This book offers invaluable advice on the following aspects of trial: Investigating your case Interviewing and preparing witnesses Organizing trial notebooks, discovery information, trial briefs, and exhibits Creating a theme

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  • David Ball on Damages 3 - Trial Guides

    David Ball on Damages 3

    David Ball on Damages 3 from Trial Guides on Vimeo. David Ball on Damages is America's bestselling text on proving damages. Now, David Ball on Damages 3 teaches you how to integrate the Reptile and Rules of the Road™ methods, along with new voir dire techniques, into the classic Damages method. Damages 3 provides step-by-step guidance on how to prepare opening statements; how to handle cross-examinations and defense "expert" examinations; and new, key methods that explain the relationship between liability and damages. David Ball on D...

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    Polarizing the Case: Exposing & Defeating the Malingering Myth - Trial Guides

    Polarizing the Case: Exposing & Defeating the Malingering Myth

    Polarizing the Case from Trial Guides on Vimeo.   Polarizing the Case is the #3 book of all time at Trial Guides, just behind Rules of the Road and David Ball on Damages. It has been called ...

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    Don't Eat the Bruises: How to Foil Their Plans to Spoil Your Case - Trial Guides

    Don't Eat the Bruises: How to Foil Their Plans to Spoil Your Case

    Up to 70 percent of jurors will have made their decision by the end of opening statements. Attorney Keith Mitnik has developed a successful method to show you how to win at the start and dismantle the defense’s case while trying yours. Keith Mitnik lives in courtrooms. When he’s not in trial, the senior trial counsel for Morgan & Morgan, the largest personal injury law firm in America, spends his time mentoring his firm's younger lawyers and inventing cutting-edge courtroom strategies. In Don’t Eat the Bruises, Mitnik reveals his result-producing methods for the first time in print. Drawing from the hard-won experience of his prolific and innovative career, Mitnik offers an approachable and proven system for trying and winning cases. Exploiting juror bias, ...

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    Working with Chiropractors in Personal Injury Cases - On Demand - Trial Guides

    Working with Chiropractors in Personal Injury Cases - On Demand

    *Plaintiffs Only Product  Recent insurance industry data from the Insurance Research Council demonstrates that doctors of chiropractic are now the leading health care providers in personal injury claims, with 40 percent of all injured parties seeking chiropractic care. In spinal injury cases, the percentage is likely even higher. Yet many lawyers still have concerns about working on cases where a doctor of chiropractic is the primary provider, and some lawyers will decline these cases altogether. But, there is a way to obtain great outcomes with doctors of chiropractic as your primary expert wi...

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    Exposing Deceptive Defense Doctors

    Even if you can make it past the injury causation issue in terms of the forces involved in a minor impact case, then you face additional causation arguments made by the insurance defense doctors. Author Dorothy Clay Sims is known amongst the national plaintiff bar as the go-to lawyer for dismantling defense doctors’ unsubstantiated opinions. Her book deals with the common insurance defenses, including: that all of the client’s spinal pain is due to pre-existing degeneration; that your client is exaggerating or malingering; that the crash isn’t the cause of the injury; that pre-existing psychological conditions are the cause of the symptoms; and more. The book will enable you to reveal dishonesty, bias, over-reaching, and incompetence by defense doctors in multiple specialties.

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    Reptile: In the MIST (and Beyond)

    The Plaintiff Attorney's Guide to the MIST-case Revolution

    A derivative of the Reptile™ litigation method, this book demonstrates how a number of prominent lawyers, trial consultants and experts win in minor impact cases.

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    Litigating Minor Impact Soft Tissue Cases

    2018-2019 Edition

    This seminal work by Trial Guides authors Dr. Michael Freeman and trial lawyer Karen Koehler, and rewritten by trial lawyer Bruce Hagen, was the first to address how lawyers could fight the minor impact defense. This book has legal and medical content as well as practice forms. Like most binder books, West and AAJ will have you purchase updates every year.

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